Chinese travel agency offers SK group tour after 7-month halt: report

Source:Global Times Published: 2017/10/26 22:23:39

A Chinese travel agency has run ads for a group tour to South Korea after a seven-month halt of such tours by Chinese travel agencies due to bilateral tension, Yonhap's Chinese edition reported on Thursday.

The Global Times found no such offerings on Thursday.

The travel agency based in North China's Hebei Province promoted a tour package to South Korea under an autumn theme, offering a discount price of 1,480 yuan per person ($223), Yonhap reported, citing a "person in charge."

The person declined to identify the travel agency because of "unresolved anti-South Korea sentiment in China" resulting from the deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, according to the report.

The report also said that travel agencies in Beijing and Shanghai stopped selling tour packages to South Korea as of March 15, although Chinese officials did not issue official notices to ban such packages.

However, the Global Times on Thursday could not locate any travel agency in Hebei Province that was selling the reported tour package online. Moreover, a search for group tours to South Korea on Ctrip, one of China's largest online travel agencies that consolidates tour packages across the country, yielded zero results, while a search for Japan resulted in hundreds of packages.

South Korea has been facing a sharp decline in Chinese visitors this year. Between March and August, the number of Chinese tourist arrivals fell 62.2 percent year-on-year to 1.72 million, media reports said Thursday.

Chinese experts have said that the steep falls in number of Chinese tourist to South Korea is a result of consumers' negative view of South Korea rather than government retaliation.